Brand perception
Nascar’s expansion from its deep-South roots to a nationwide footprint in the 1990s and early 2000s coincided with the sport’s most successful era, but there were growing pains too.
Fans say much changed after Dale Earnhardt, the sport’s charismatic villain, died in a Daytona 500 crash in 2001. Subsequent moves to improve driver safety led to the introduction of the boxy “Car of Tomorrow” in 2008. But fans objected to its looks, and drivers didn’t like the way it performed.
Nascar’s attempts to infuse more meaning into its season—a playoff system first introduced in 2004 and modified multiple times, and a “stage racing” gimmick meant to create more point-winning moments—have met mixed reaction from fans. It’s presented Nascar with a common sports-league dilemma: balancing the need to evolve with the risk of alienating longtime fans.
An explosion of new racetracks in the early 2000s aided Nascar’s national footprint but several of the new venues proved entirely too large, and lacked the charm and racing action of the smaller facilities whose events they inherited. Nascar has since moved on from some of them, while other speedways have reduced capacity, including Daytona, which removed 46,000 seats as part of a renovation.
For most live sporting events, 65,000 is a capacity crowd, Clark noted. But if the venue seats 100,000, it contributes to a “perception problem” that’s dogged Nascar over the years, he said.
“I think the perception is that [Nascar] is a small regional sport, and kind of an also-ran in the lexicon of the stick-and-ball sports in the U.S.,” Clark said. “But if you look at all of the measurables, our media rights deal, our attendance figures, our TV ratings, all of those quantifiable numbers are very, very strong.”
Looking to bring racing closer to fans, Nascar has been experimenting with new markets recently, like the Los Angeles Coliseum and an F1-ish street race in Chicago, which has been a big winner. On June 15, Nascar will race in Mexico City—its first foreign Cup race since visiting Canada in 1958.
The sport has also worked to demonstrate it has moved beyond a reputation of being “old, white and Southern” as described by Steve Phelps, Nascar’s president, speaking recently in the Excellent Leadership Podcast. The organization officially banned Confederate flags at its events in 2020.